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A work of feminist psychoanalytic literary criticism that offers original readings of early canonical works of the Western tradition. In cogently argued and brilliant readings of texts ranging from St. Augustine''s Confessions to Milton''s Paradise Lost , Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes , Psychoanalysis and the Patriarchal Tradition shows the ongoing cultural value of psychoanalytic approaches-flexibly and critically applied-to the interpretation of major literary works. Peter L. Rudnytsky makes a persuasive and striking case for tracing significant connections between the Judeo-Christian story of the Fall and the Greek myth of Oedipus: Proposing that the Oedipus complex can be viewed as the "latent content" of the Fall, Rudnytsky at once respects the explanatory power of these master-myths while he interrogates their claims to universality. Drawing above all on Freud, Klein, Winnicott, and Lacan, Rudnytsky integrates a range of psychoanalytic perspectives with deconstruction, new historicism, and psychobiography to highlight issues of gender and sexuality not only in Augustine and Milton but also in Gottfried''s Tristan and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight , More''s History of King Richard III , Shakespeare''s Othello and King Lear , as well the poetry of Marvell and other 17th-century writers who exhibit the "dissociation of sensibility" Rudnytsky links to the execution of King Charles I. Through synthesis of psychoanalysis, feminism, and literary criticism, Psychoanalysis and the Patriarchal Tradition sheds new light on old masterpieces even as it reveals the contours of an entire tradition.
List of contents
1. Augustine's Family Romance
2. Incest and the Fall in Gottfried's
Tristan3. "Where th'Offense Is": Oedipal Temptation in
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight4. More's
History of King Richard III as an Uncanny Text
5. The Purloined Handkerchief in
Othello 6. "The Dark and Vicious Place": The Dread of the Vagina in
King Lear7. Dissociation and Decapitation
8. "Here Only Weak": Sexuality and the Structure of Trauma in
Paradise Lost9. Milton, Marriage, and Blindness
10. "What Once I Was, and What Am Now":
Paradise Regained and
Samson AgonistesBibliographyIndex
About the author
Peter L. Rudnytsky is Professor of English at the University of Florida as well as Head of the Department of Academic and Professional Affairs and Chair of the Committee on Confidentiality of the American Psychoanalytic Association. From 2001 to 2011, he served as the editor of American Imago. A coeditor of the Psychoanalytic Horizons series and editor of the History of Psychoanalysis series for Routledge, Rudnytsky is the author of books from Freud and Oedipus (1987) to Reading Psychoanalysis: Freud, Rank, Ferenczi, Groddeck (2002), for which he received the Gradiva Award, and Mutual Analysis: Ferenczi, Severn, and the Origins of Trauma Theory (2022). He maintains a private practice in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in Gainesville.
